European Forest Monitoring Approaches

This article provides a comprehensive overview of Earth Observation based forest monitoring approaches in Europe, from early approaches using low- and medium-resolution satellite data to most recent operational monitoring systems developed in the frame of the European earth observation programme Copernicus/GMES, on which a special focus is laid. First, the pan-European forest-related information contained in CORINE Land Cover as well as the rich portfolio of regional, national and pan-European-scale Forest services and products implemented by the ESA-funded GMES Service Element Forest Monitoring are discussed. Together with the pan-European forest products provided by the Joint Research Centre’s European Forest Data Centre, GSE FM had laid the foundations for the subsequent pre-operational stage of European Forest Monitoring undertaken by the European Commission-funded FP7 Land core project geoland2. This has successfully demonstrated a set of Core Mapping Service and Core Information Service forest products in multi-national demonstration sites over Europe, finally leading to first-time operational mapping of a pan-European High-Resolution Forest Layer in the frame of the GMES Initial Operations Land, being implemented by the European Environment Agency since 2012. The evolution, product specifications and differences between these Copernicus Core Service forest products are discussed. Additionally, customized regional forest Downstream services as designed by the FP7 project EUFODOS are presented. Conclusions and an outlook towards future forest monitoring approaches are provided for the upcoming Sentinel-2 era.